The Latin American Narcotics Trade and U.S. National Security

others concerned with preserving civil liberties. The expanded military effort
has some inherent dangers. Intelligence data, especially that concerned with
smuggling and involving U.S. citizens, is not easily segregated. The easiest,
and thus most probable, technique to collect such data is to collect as
much as possible and sort it out later. Since the destination of illicit drugs
is primarily to U.S. criminal organizations, it seems inevitable that domestic
intelligence data will be collected and shared with civilian law enforcement
officials. Some of the data collected will not involve law violations.

CONCLUSION

The 100th Congress' actions have brought the military more directly into
the civilian arena, the language of defense and drug bills notwithstanding.
Using the military to collect intelligence data, transport civilian law
enforcement personnel, shoot at suspected smugglers' boats and ships, and
engage in hot pursuit into the United States and using the National Guard
in civilian law enforcement means that the military will be performing
civilian functions. Giving naval commanders the authority to attack and
even sink civilian ships, some of which might be innocently used, without
legal responsibility is to put those commanders above the law. The initial
step in converting military personnel into civilian police has begun. Few
military or civilian law enforcement agencies want the military to become
police, and neither believe that the military can effectively stop drug
smuggling without dramatically changing the nature of American
government.

Although the United States is not Latin America with its long tradition
of military intervention and military dictatorship, U.S. citizens should heed
high-ranking U.S. military officers's warnings that bringing the military
directly into the antidrug campaign threatens civilian government. Framers
of the Constitution, well aware of Cromwell's military dictatorship in
mid-seventeenth centuryEngland and of the imposition of martial law on Massachusetts Bay colony by the British in 1774, required a civilian to be
commander-in-chief of the armed forces and limited army appropriations
to a yearly basis.

The military is being set up to fail. All the available evidence indicates
that interdiction efforts by civilians or military or both are doomed to
failure. The supply of marijuana and cocaine is so large and smuggling
techniques so well developed and so easily changed that Congress is
proposing little more than political grandstanding in an election year. The
increased role of the military, limited as it now is, will have a negligible
effect on the supply of drugs.

The military could conceivably interdict the flow of drugs into the United States by doing what it is designed to do: fight a war. Such a war,
however, would be a low-intensity conflict in which the enemy is not easily
identifiable and could hide among "friendly" personnel within a gigantic
area. Consequently, the most effective strategy would be for the military to
take control of U.S. borders by gaining control of the high seas near the
coastline, picketing soldiers along the land borders, gaining complete

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